The Inspector Walter Darriteau Murder Mysteries - Books 1-4 by David Carter (best finance books of all time .txt) 📕

He’d said it deadpan, and Walter wasn’t sure how to take it.

‘You don’t know what worries are,’ joked Walter.

Wazir presented his deadpan face.

He’d make an excellent poker player.

‘This country has been good to us,’ said Wazir. ‘You and I.’

Walter grinned and said, ‘It has, and to some more than others. I can’t compete with an MBE.’

Wazir sniffed a laugh.

‘Baubles. Tokenism. Doesn’t mean a thing.’

‘You can pass it on to me if you don’t want it.’

‘Ah, now that I couldn’t do.’

‘Will you ever retire, Wazir?’

‘Doubt it; don’t know what I would do with myself. You?’

‘I don’t want to, but sooner or later they’ll retire me.’

That was the great benefit of working for oneself; thought Wazir, you could work for as long or as short as you wanted. Working for the government like Walter did, and you were at the mercy of politicians, and everyone knew that politicians weren’t up to much.

The doors clunked and Harry Barrett came in and stood in the foyer and blinked around the room, didn’t see much, didn’t have much eyesight, it was the clocks that did it.

Walter waved his hand and said ‘Harry!’ and in the next moment he had joined them at the table, as Wazir made his excuse and left. Harry took off his glasses and began wiping them on a maroon napkin, just as Walter’s sizzling meal arrived.

‘Tikka is it?’ said Harry, gawping down, mouth open.

Walter nodded.

‘I’ll have the same, and a jug of cold beer.’

‘Good idea,’ said Walter, ‘One for me too,’ and the kid hurried away to fetch the beers.

Harry had been working with clocks for more than fifty years. Servicing them, cleaning them, trading them, loving them, it was all the same to Harry. He was still operating out of the same small shop set half way down one of the jiggers opposite the cathedral.

He’d developed a tic, or more accurately a tick, as his head involuntarily moved from side to side in perfect second time. When he was really concentrating or fully engrossed over anything, his tongue would also click clock against the roof of his mouth, again in perfect time, so much so that occasionally Walter would have to say, ‘Harry, you’re ticking again.’

Harry would grin and stop, for a while.

He’d lost his wife six years since, and now frequented the State, the British Legion, the Connie Club, and the Masonic Lodge, ringing the changes, doing the rounds, anything to take him out of the loneliness of a chiming house at night-time. It didn’t do his waistline much good, or his cholesterol count either, but he was a happy man, and good company.

The doors clunked again and Walter peered that way hoping it wouldn’t be, but it was, Austerity Hayes. He tried to hunker down, without success, they had been spotted, ‘Yoo hoo!’ she screamed, and already she was on her way over.

‘Bugger,’ whispered Walter.

‘Problem?’ ticked Harry.

‘Austerity’s here.’

‘You can say that again, sales are bloody awful!’ said Harry, guffawing at his own little joke, as Austerity grabbed the chair between the men, whisked it out and sat down.

‘That’s what I like to see,’ she said. ‘Good company enjoying their food. Tikka is it?’

‘Yep,’ said Harry, sucking sauce covered meat between his dentures.

Walter nodded and sipped his beer.

‘I’ll have the same,’ she said, and raised her arm and yelled, ‘Boy!’ and the Punjabi kid came running, not portraying any offence as being addressed in such a way. In a few years time he would be a specialist heart surgeon, but for now he was, in Austerity’s eyes, her boy.

Walter pinched a look at her. He tried hard not to stare but that was difficult. She was a big ruddy woman born in 1940, and with the hard food rationing on at the time her father thought it something of a jape to call her Austerity. It would remind her forever of the importance of being frugal, he always said, and if she ever was, she certainly didn’t show it.

She was wearing a quite ridiculous navy blue bonnet and along with the navy blue suit, stretching at the seams, she could have passed as a Sally Army choir-mistress.

Her father had once owned the largest independent department store in Chester and had sold it to one of the multiples in 1977 for a tidy sum. Twelve months later he was dead, and as Austerity was his only surviving relative, for she had never married and never come close, Austerity promptly copped the lot in the will.

Quite what made her put all her money into commercial property throughout the city no one knew, but she did, and within ten years her investment had quadrupled before she sold out and banked the cash. Some called her lucky, others astute, Austerity didn’t care. Looked forward to the quarterly bank statement dropping through the door.

She spent her money on eating, socialising, taking three cruises every year, quite alone, where she could eat and socialise her way around the world against a different backdrop every morning. She also smoked cheroots, though Walter had never actually seen her with one. In one of her quiet moments she calculated that at her current healthy rate of spend, she had enough cash to last her one hundred and ninety-two years.

Now in her seventies that seemed unlikely. She was trying hard to dent the cash pile, but not hard enough.

She was talking about an amazing meal she had enjoyed the previous night in a new Indonesian restaurant that had just opened in the city centre. ‘Never eaten an Indonesian before,’ she said, laughing at her own little joke, though she looked more than capable of it, Walter imagined, a couple of them if she was a trifle peckish, as she proceeded to tell them all about the meal, course by course.

Walter’s concentration wandered. He was thinking of ordering a pudding. He glanced across the bar. Something caught his tired eye. The chrome stools glistened in the gold light. There was just the one couple sitting there now, a glamorous pair,